Impact of Timer Plugins and 4 in 1 devices on total device count

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Hello,

I have a good amount of Z-Wave devices - probably around 40. I also have an Insteon Fanlinc device too, which means I have Alsteon installed.

Of those Z-Wave devices, two of them are the Aeon 4 in 1 devices that are included in that count.

I also have 1 IP cam and am thinking of adding another 1 or 2.

I have added in 5 count down timers for a few motion sensors.

The vera started acting a little wonky the other night and I have made so many changes to it that I thought it would be worth it to start over fresh. Because of that, it got me to thinking whether or not I am overloading my Vera Lite.

Do count down timer plugins have a big impact on the vera?
Should I count the 4 in 1 devices as one or two in my total count of devices?
How much of an impact is the new PLEG plugin on the vera lite?

Is writing my own count down code going to have less of an impact than running all of these individual countdown timer instances?

What kind of rule of thumb should I use? 65 devices is what I have read is the limit, but I don’t know what the definition of a device is.

2

On my list of planned improvements to the Countdown Timer plugin is to allow it to sleep longer between ticks. It’s hard to say whether that’ll fix your problem, but it’s worth a try. Watch over at the plugin’s topic for when I announce this feature.

3

Memory is the limiting factor … that’s why I opted for Vera as opposed to Vera Lite.

If you do NOT have a memory stick for logging … than all of your logs are eating up valuable memory as well.

A rule of thumb I came up with when I analyze system was to use 2MB per device (I do not think you need to count the child devices of the 4 in 1’s, but I have not proven that).

Scenes are fairly light weight compared to a device.

That’s why I recommend PLEG … You can pack a LOT of logic/timers into 1 device …

4

I have 4 motion sensors and one ip camera with another on the way. That would mean to me the potential of six motion activated scenes with different timeouts. Pretty much I want to use the motion sensors as occupancy sensors.

How many instances of PLEG would I need?

5

You can do it all with one PLEG instance.
You would need multiple PLTS or Countdown Timer Plugins.

6

So does PLEG replace PLTS in the long run?

7

PLTS is useful if yo need to manually interact with the timing cycle. It provides buttons for On, Off, Trigger, Reset, Arm, Bypass

With PLEG you can only Arm/Bypass the entire set of conditions.
I use both … but for pure Automation … I use PLEG.
I do use multiple PLEGs … I break them down by functionality.
1 PLEG for Lighting, 1 PLEG for equipment management, 1 PLEG for security and home/away related stuff.